OK, so I'm playing my way through the game slowly, trying a load of stuff out.

I'm at triabl stage, I've taken a couple of other tribes down, but I decide I want to befriend one or two to get my stats back into the middle zone.

So I grab a bunch of instruments and give some tribes some free food, and I've gotten them to nutural.I go to play them a tune but my chief gets stage fright.

The chief kind of turns left-to-right, as if looking for the band to play, and they all just stand there for ages - doing nothing.I can't play songs, so I can't get back into the green, and unless I go evil for tribal stage, I'm not going to be able to continue with the game.

++ I'm going to an audition now, when I get back I'l put some random stuff together for this thread. Give me an idea of what to do.(Also, i'm considering re-creating the Octibians... Like a full remake...))

Other than the obvious fixes, the plate wobbles, mouths on limbs, eyes etc, one thing I'd LOVE to see is metaball and limb deforming.

I know metaballs are, by nature, spheres, but I'm sure it would be possible to allow them to be flattened in different directions.

if you try to make a really large creature, you can't help but eventually make it as large sideways as it is upways. Not many real creatures' chests buldge out sideways, and putting a limb on them just ames it worse.It'd be great to flatten them out a bit...

same for limbs, i'd love to be able to make them look more... flipper flipper like... Or flatten out the balls at the top to make them look more like real muscles...

And unfortunatly, the majority of average-through-hardcore gamers mostly think

How it looks - 70%How it plays - 30%How it works - Saywhat?%

-Because they have found what they're good at and like to keep it that way.But the people in this forum are more like

How it looks - 20%How it plays - 35%How it works - 35%How can I this manipulate for use in my plot to take over the world - 10%

Which means we're more open minded and accepting, even to the point of rejoicing about, new ideas and breakthroughs.And I appreciate that. This is a great community.So next time you get in/see an argument like this, just remember you're better than them mentally and spiritually, then plot the day they will be putting those game-playing skills to good use in you remote-controlled underground diamond mines.

I can to a Ben Stein - like voice. Or at least have a good enough go =D I have some very boring-voiced teachers, too XD

Hmm, if there's a whole time travel thing, the Corvala's collective memory could be a good dramatic device. Basically like a character that lives forever. Could be interesting =D

In Hydro's style:

Corvala: Outsiders, unmeddling but reliable, high-tech/extremely intelligent.Octibians: Mindless cannon fodder and galactic virus for the future of the universe.

Edit:

Here's an idea;Put a few lines of dialouge up, based on the species we have listed. A little description of what the character should be like. We can then all post our interpretations and see which is best, which would also help with selection of protagonist/antagonist species - we don't want something we can't handle...

OK, I havn't had chance to read through this all yet (got stuff to do) but I am interested.

Here's some random stuff i'm going to type down before I leg it;

Voice acting-I've been working on my voice a lot latley, and I'm getting better at voices (namely random Cartoons, soundbites or dr evil, but at least they're voices) and singing at several pitches (if, say, someone wants to hit the Vis with the ultimatly deadly weapon; a sing-ray, forcing them to go all broardway musical). If you have any requests for auditions I'l have a go.I also have *some* access to sound editing equipment, including a remodulator (which is what they use for just about every dr who villain to date)

Drawing/animation-I can pick up styles of drawing quite easily, so should be able to help with any drawing done.I have access to SWiSH animator, which is basically the baby version of Flash. It's not too bad for animating, although I plan to get hold of a new version of flash ASAP.

Creatures-I obviously have two creatures from those times which were *sort* of involved with the whole RP side and can be used as you wish;

Corvala: A race that 'bloomed' very early in the universe, and is sat right out on the outer edge of reality. Due to their fast evolutionary rate and inherited memory they became sapient very quickly and found ways to increase their life-span vastly by putting off sexual maturity (meaning a corvala is about 90 earthyears before they can get it on, as opposed to their original 90 earth days)

They are a quiet race, prefering to observe other species than interact with them, but are well armed in case of a large threat. Even with all their advanced technology, they still prefer hand-to-hand combat or a form of jousting.

Octibians: A small-ish race of 8-legged creatures. They are as smart as an earth dog or wolf. An unknown race saw their potential, abducted them and Genetically engineered them, creating a biological army of super-weapons. The resulting creatures are extreemly aggressive and dangerous. They reproduce quickly and, upon wiping out the planet's inhabitant species, are shot into the air from mountain ranges by extreemly powerful, giant octibian forcers. After several ettempts, the rock-encased young will hurtle like a comet onto a new planet, continuing their reign of terror.The creatures were also sold on the black-space-market for a while, only worsening the threat.

Unfortunatly the story never took off propperly.

FinallyScripting:I'm currently writing my own film script, but I'l help out with any story ideas needed =]

So yeah, contact me as nessersary.

Also, is this going to be done like - all animators are givene a scene, then it's all linked together. If so, why not allow style changes between scenes? Would make it interesting =]

No; because the part fires exactly at the flying veichal. I wouldn't mind so much if it was the mouth's spit or a swipe attack, but I'd have liked the projectiles to shoot where they are aimed in the CC, not be aimed to shoot at a target...

I know it's pointless, but I need to keep my creativity warm when I'm too bored to write my script...So, a simple idea;

When a part is selected, you can bring up a little menu of sliders and toggleboxes;

1) Slider: Power -vs- Price:Automatically set just over half way (leaning towards 'power').Full 'power' makes the part very expensive to place, and only gives minor additions to the peice. For example; it's stats may go up, in total, by 0.9. This means 0.9 spread over all of the stats it affects.However, some parts may gain other enhancements from this (for example, call/roar distance, spit distance/speed[thus making it more accurate], grip for feet, recharge time for attacks)

Conversly, putting it down to the minimum (i.e. Price) will make the part very cheep to place, at the expence of most - or all - of the part's functionality. (For example; putting it to mimimum on a detail-only part will completly strip away it's one stat, on a mouth it might take away spit attacks, on a foot it might take away charge attacks)An algorithm would have to be made to make sure the system can't be abused to get high-stats cheeply (or else, just make it so that the price is effected less than the stats when going down, but more when going up)

2) Sliders: Stat modification:Only available if the part has been on the creature for several generations - 5 generations minimum, and then another slider added for each generation after this.Through this, you may change stat Bias slightly. You choose the stats on either end of the slider - the stats can only be from the peice in question - and the slider represents 50% of the remaining 'stat power'.The sliders work in order from first to last, so if I had a foot and hadCharge >50%> SpeedCharge >50%> SprintThe speed would be getting 50% of the original 'charge' number, wheras sprint would get 50% of the 50% left, so 25%

3) Toggles: part specific:

For parts which spit, aiming should be togglable (seing how it seems to be on now). This means you can have spitters which aim (useful for predators), or you could cover a creature in spitters, and have them fire in every direction when pressed (useful for creatures with pack enemies)

4) Slider: Attack direction:

For weapon parts - slider (from 0 to 180 - front to back) indicating the direction the parts should attack towards. This means that when the attack is signalled, the parts would only swipe/spit/bite if the target is in that general direction, and the animation is modified accordingly.Damage is the dealt depending on which weapons 'fire', instead of having an overall attack strength, and means more thought needs to be put into protective weaponry.

5) Toggles: Attack creation:

After spending a long time in the creature phase (i.e. 75 evolutions or more), these toggle boxes are unlocked. They basically grant you 5 new attacks, and you can specifiy which weapons are used in each.

The toggles are in rows and columns; the Rows are attack number (1-5) and the columns are the skills available on each part. You can only choose one skill per part. Skills that require whole body movement (sprint, stealth, dance and charge) are universal tick boxes - coloured white, whereas those which only require one part (bite, sing, mating call, strike, spit, etc) can be individual to each part.Toggles can be unique to symetrical parts.

The 5 attacks have very long cooldowns, and also send the parts and/or universal skills into cooldown.If, for example, I had 2 individual mouths, and my attack only used one to bite, then until the the first mouth had 'cooled down', my bite attack would rely on the other mouth, and the attack stats would fall accordingly.

For balance, there is a cap on the ammount of stat power you can use in each attack, which would stop me using too many over-powered attacks at once, Mouths can only do one thing at a time, you can only do one full-body activity per attack, and you can only use each skill twice per part (so I can't have my carnivore's single mouth bite in all five attacks)